Until you are familiar with philosophy, it seems unapproachable and difficult, like the most popular girl at university.
You don’t touch philosophy until the last minute, thinking that nothing will happen to you with it...
But when you try to communicate with her, you will understand: in communication she is much more interesting and pleasant than more approachable girls.
She's a little closed off, but she became that way because everyone avoided her and put this label on her - unavailable.
A more experienced man knows that it’s easier to hit on hot girls than scary ones - they’re so glad that at least someone had the balls to approach them.
Philosophy and that girl from uni have something in common: they are closed only to the insecure and stupid losers.
For cool guys, they are kind and good girls.
Many philosophical works are very easy to read and understand; much easier than the same fiction.
Today I will introduce you to the fathers of philosophy - the ancient Greeks. Or to be more precise, with their father.
Socrates.
All day long he walked around Athens and set the brains of everyone who got in his way.
Socrates was so busy with philosophy that he did not even write his books. His students had to take notes for him.
One of his most famous students, Plato, wrote the book Dialogues. In this book you can take a look at what a bad guy Socrates was; how he won arguments and destroyed his rivals with irrefutable logic.
Instead of the boring moralizing that philosophy seems to be, I read one of the best self-help books in the world.
Socrates expresses himself in simple words, like you or me.
And his Words will make you laugh, think, respect him and, of course, make you understand that philosophy is the business of tough men, like our today's philosopher Socrates.
Now you will receive the lessons of ancient Greek wisdom left for you by Socrates - and you better listen to them, otherwise Socrates will come for you.
He will ask you his tricky questions until you recognize his wisdom and his rightness.
Don't take anything for granted
Socrates questions everything he can: society, art, life, philosophy, ideas, thoughts, regulations, orders.
His philosophy develops in you one critical skill that most people lack: critical thinking.
Critical thinking forces you to think rather than accept everything you are told on TV.
Critical thinking gives you the chance to choose which routines are good for you and which ones are bullshit.
For example, the most important human nonsense is contract work.
And it was precisely this nonsense that fooled everyone.
Most people work eight to five and don't ask themselves, “Why am I doing this? Is there really no other way to earn money?
It’s not for nothing that self-development books say that money is attracted by thoughts. And the first thought that you need to cultivate in yourself is: “What the fuck am I doing at this job?”
This thought will grow and bear fruit: you will work all your free time, just to learn something new in order to earn money in a different way.
The most important thing is to question: “Is this how it should be?”
Because as soon as you think about many things in this life, you will understand: you can do many things differently than everyone else does.
And you will have a chance to change it.
Even if it’s not for all of humanity - someone needs to sweep the yard, but for yourself you can take this leap and never go back.
No matter what you are told, no matter what is considered accepted in society, always ask yourself whether it is right.
Do not accept anything without faith in order to become wise and intelligent like Socrates.
Boost your brain
If you ignored all our advice, and tomorrow is the championship final “What? Where? When?" League of classmates, there is another way to shake out the fat on the brain convolutions.
■ Neurometabolic stimulants, also known as nootropics, are drugs that have an activating effect on memory and mental activity. Mind you, completely legal. The words to search in a pharmacy are: phenotropil, allertek, deprenil. You can also try phenibut, but, unlike previous drugs, it is taken in a course of 2-3 weeks; a one-time use will not give the desired result. And it should be like this: lack of desire to drop everything and go to sleep, increased reaction speed, slight irritability and the feeling that you are smarter than everyone around. There is, however, a small problem. “The effect of nootropics on the brain has not yet been fully studied,” says Konstantin Anokhin, head of the laboratory of memory neurobiology at the Institute of Normal Physiology of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. And one more thing: do not confuse nootropics with dietary supplements. These will also make you smarter for a while, but they act differently, and their effect is weaker. These are, say, ginkgo biloba, guarana, eleutherococcus and ginseng root.
Happiness and wisdom in controlling your desires
Look at the people around you and you will see one thing: they all do what their impulsive desires tell them to do.
Get drunk? Right now.
Buy a new phone? Easily. I’ll do it right now, take out a loan for it.
I want a new car. Lender, run here!
Cheating on my wife, with whom I was married for 15 years and had two children? Of course, my dick is smoking hot for that beauty!
Take a closer look at people and you will definitely see what I am talking about.
People don't know how to control their desires.
Socrates says:
Socrates, as always, says wise things.
He spoke about this two and a half thousand years ago, but during this time people did not learn to control themselves better, although they began to drive cars.
If you want to be head and shoulders wiser than Kolya, a credit lover, then behave wisely - learn to control your desires.
What is old age?
Director of the St. Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology of the Northwestern Branch of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Professor Vladimir Khavinson identifies four weak links in the human body
, which individually and collectively cause deterioration in the functioning of the body (old age in the biological sense):
cardiovascular system (begins to become capricious at 40); osteoporosis (manifests more often after 50 years); a weakened immune system that no longer controls cancer cells; diabetes and hepatitis, leading to serious complications, quickly aging the human body.
Pleasure and goodness are different things
Socrates, like any wise person, separated two things: pleasure and good.
Eating McDonald's every day and watching three movies every day is fun, but there is no benefit in it. You're just wasting your time and not doing anything useful.
Taking bitters from a doctor or having vitamins shot up your ass isn't fun, but there is a benefit to it. You make your body healthier and stronger, but it’s not very pleasant.
There are things that bring both pleasure and benefit at the same time: working out in the gym, reading books.
The main wisdom that Socrates speaks about: Pleasure ≠ Good.
There is little pleasure in getting fucked, but in martial arts you get a great benefit - the opportunity to protect yourself and your loved ones.
Going to the cinema is the most aimless pastime you can imagine. There is zero good in it.
But it is much more popular than going to the gym or martial arts class.
Now answer me one question and, as Socrates says, correct me if I’m wrong, because by doing this you will bring me good: Do most people on the street look fit and athletic or do they look like sacks of potatoes?
You and I both know that they are more like bags.
So now your main task is not to confuse good and pleasure and strive for good.
Because any bag can strive for pleasure, but not every one of them can control themselves and distinguish between what is good and where is a penny pleasure.
Anatoly Wasserman
Journalist, political consultant: “Read and watch more, try to find connections and analogies between different knowledge - and pretty soon you will feel what other gaps should be filled in order to understand more. Without intelligence, everything else is simply useless. Being smart is not only fashionable, but also very pleasant. In my experience, what interests you is better remembered. Be curious - and effortlessly remember everything that turns out to be curious. But in order to preserve memory, you need to actively work and have diverse interests. Then a lot will be remembered, and memory will be a reliable support.”
People hate geniuses and the truth
Socrates is one of the greatest philosophers of all mankind.
He spread his wisdom and made people smarter.
Those who listened to him also became philosophers and also went down in history: Plato, Xenophon, Euclid and others.
Euclid is the creator of Euclidean geometry, on which the entire modern world is based.
Buildings, smartphones, computers - they all grew out of Euclidean geometry if you trace things back to the beginning.
Do you know how his compatriots thanked Socrates for all his wisdom and contribution to world development?
They sentenced him to death and forced him to take poison.
Most people are idiots who cannot accept wisdom and truth. They killed a genius.
They get angry at the truth they are told - and they blame the person from whose mouth it comes out.
People hate genius and people hate truth.
People judged Galileo for believing the words of Copernicus. Galileo believed that the Sun does not revolve around the Earth, but rather the Earth revolves around the Sun.
At his trial he had to recant this to avoid being hanged.
He was judged by idiot people.
If you start showing on central federal channels that the Earth is flat, then most likely 70% of people will believe it.
Because people don't like the truth.
People love to listen to what they have to say. People love to be in the majority.
Think with your own head and become wise and smart like Socrates.
They will hate you for telling the truth - but don't let that stop you.
Do it the other way around
This method may seem quite absurd to some, but it is quite effective. Try brushing your teeth with a different hand than you usually use. Try holding the mouse in your other hand. Can you?
When we make small changes to our usual actions, our brain is forced to think about how, taking into account all the changes, we will get the same result as before. This has a beneficial effect on its functioning.
How to do it
Challenge your brain and force it to find unexpected solutions. Take a new route to work, learn to navigate using maps in an unfamiliar city, talk to your friends in the language you are learning.
Don't listen and do what most people do
You can't listen to most people's advice simply because there are far fewer successful people in the world than there are supermarket cashiers.
For every hundred cashiers or office workers, there will be one or two people whose advice will truly be valuable and make sense.
This is what will happen to you if you listen to normal people:
- You'll find an eight-to-five job where the boss will rip you off like crazy
- You'll get fat
- You'll go dumb
- You will be a "normal person"
Socrates said something that was contrary to the “normal person” of those times - and therefore he changed the world and went down in history.
Remember: where there is a crowd, it is pointless to expect great rewards and successes simply because there are not enough of them for everyone.
Many people complain that they are underpaid at work.
They change one job after another, trying to find a good job.
But it's not about any specific job.
The thing is, you'll never make much money if you go to work where a lot of people work.
Just like Yin-Yang harmony, there is MUCH-LITTLE harmony.
If you work in a position where a LOT of people work: cashiers, salespeople, waiters, loaders, then you get paid LITTLE.
If you work in a position where FEW people work: entrepreneurs, directors, tutors, personal trainers, freelancers - then you get paid A LOT.
The balance of MUCH-LITTLE is always maintained.
The more people can do it, the less you will get paid.
It's like your life is a road.
The highway with the MOST people has the LOWER flow rate.
The highway with the LESS people has the HIGHEST traffic speed.
Don't listen to most people, because their advice will lead you to the same place it led them - to the unsuccessful majority.
Choose your own path, as Socrates did, and then something better awaits you than many other people.
Install your smart app
Feeling an unpleasant pulsation in our too-fast-growing brain, we turned to our mobile phone screens, hoping to find salvation in some mind-numbing game. But what is it? And on mobile devices you can’t take a step away from the dominance of educational programs!
■ Memory trainer. Consistently memorize the presses of multi-colored buttons and repeat them. Essentially, this is the same “N back” task disguised as a game. ■ Einstein. Training for the mind. HD collection of 30 exercises for the development of logic, memory, counting and attention. ■ The brain of a genius. A variation on the theme of the famous logical problem, created, according to legend, by Einstein because he did not want to go to kindergarten.
Endure difficulties with dignity
Socrates is famous not only for how he lived, but also for how he died.
He endured difficulties with dignity. When he was sentenced to death, this is what he said:
After this, Socrates said that he could have avoided the death sentence, but did not humiliate himself in front of these people, as they expected.
He said:
Socrates teaches us courage.
At the trial, he did not cry like a girl who hit her little finger.
The best of philosophers showed by his example that you should hold your head high, even when the chances are gone.
Learn a foreign language
Andrea Macelli, a doctor of neuroscience at the University of London, shows that people who speak several foreign languages find it easier to switch between different mental tasks.
An additional impetus for the development of your brain will be given by a new way of learning obscure foreign words. ■ For example, learning a language using parallel translations. On the site getparalleltranslations.com you will find books on the pages of which English and Russian texts are simultaneously posted. Essentially, these are the same credits with which you love to watch the latest TV series.
■ Slovak web developer Wojtek Rinik believes that words should be learned before they appear in a book. Surprised by his advice, you should feed the unfamiliar text to the wordsfromtext.com service, in response it will generate a list of the most commonly used words and invite you to mark the unfamiliar ones in it. If desired, you can print them out with a translation, memorize them, and then attack unsuspecting literature fully armed.
Be willing to change your mind if you're wrong.
In the old years I noticed that I had no need for an argument. When I'm wrong, it's easier for me to admit that the other person is telling the truth.
I considered this my weakness, but in fact, admitting that someone else is right is a strength that not everyone has.
Socrates confirmed my approach.
He often told his interlocutors: “If I am wrong, refute me, because by doing this you will bring good to me too.”
One of the wisest men who ever lived was open to changing his mind - so don't be shy about being wiser, too.
Don’t be that sheep who stands his ground even when he’s obviously wrong and crap.
Something else is interesting.
Once you are completely open to changing your point of view, you will notice that it is unlikely that anyone will be able to change it.
Because a point of view that has withstood a dispute—a test—automatically becomes stronger and firmer.
If you have beliefs that you cannot challenge simply because “THIS IS THE ACCEPTANCE,” it means that your beliefs are not strong enough, and you yourself understand this.
If you are really confident in what you say, then invite people to convince you - because this way you will test your faith and beliefs for strength.
I recommend that you read the book “Dialogues” by Plato yourself, where you will get to know Socrates in the first person (so to speak).
Perhaps you will see other lessons of wisdom that Socrates wanted to teach - be sure to write them in the comments.
Apply these lessons and become wise and intelligent yourself, like Socrates.
I hope you enjoyed the lessons of ancient Greek wisdom from one of the best philosophers of mankind.
I advise you to agree and accept them, otherwise... remember?
Socrates will come for you.
See you later.
Vlad Makeev.
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What kind of person is this wise?
That's why real wisdom begins when we stop obeying our mind. When we reveal the highest manifestations of consciousness within ourselves. When we discover intuition, a true understanding of things, real common sense.
And indeed, it is believed that a wise person should have such qualities as tolerance, peacefulness, and modesty. Be able to listen and understand other people. Think soberly, clearly defend your views, but at the same time understand the other point of view of your interlocutor. Have flexible thinking.
Don't push yourself forward, but don't hide from danger either. Be able to love others and the world. Be calm in any difficult situation, managing your emotions. Be mentally relaxed. Don't be afraid of life's difficulties. Accept all manifestations of life, any turn of your fate. Be happy with what you have. Be able to enjoy life, be happy no matter what.
In fact, there are a lot of qualities, but they all speak, first of all, about the spiritual maturity of a person. They become possible only when a person goes beyond the mind and discovers higher manifestations of consciousness within himself. When it awakens intuition within itself. When it puts under control the manifestations of the mind and psyche that give rise to a sense of self-importance, all kinds of fears, and a dual, one-sided view of things.
But you need to understand that wisdom is not throwing away the mind, it is also one-sidedness. The mind is also needed; it adequately performs its function of analyzing information. Only the combination of true understanding through intuition and the use of analytical thinking leads to adequacy and common sense.
Learn to formulate thoughts briefly
This is where social networks can come to the rescue. For example, on the social network Twitter, you can only leave an entry that consists of no more than 140 characters. It turns out that using Twitter, we learn to organize information and express our thoughts clearly and concisely.
If you don’t want to share your thoughts on social networks, then you can simply take a piece of paper, draw a figure on it and write down your thoughts without going beyond its boundaries.
How to do it
Create an account on Twitter, find a piece of paper or open notes on your phone, decide what boundaries you will set for yourself, and start writing. You can do this at any convenient time to take a little break.
Play mind games
Brain stimulation games and programs are usually developed by neurologists and cognitive psychologists specifically to improve the functioning of different parts of the brain. You can find a variety of games: some develop memory, others develop attentiveness, others improve spatial orientation, and others teach concentration.
How to do it
Think about how exactly you would like to pump up your brain. Do you want to train your memory? Play games that teach you to remember different sequences. Want to become more observant? Play games where you have to search for various objects. You can choose how to train your brain.
